


Sanctified

by coyotl



Series: carving the road [1]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: BAMF!Stiles, D/s dynamic, Demonic Possession, Dubious Consent, M/M, Porn With Plot, Top!Stiles, bottom!Derek
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-31
Updated: 2014-06-04
Packaged: 2018-01-27 16:55:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,218
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1717853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coyotl/pseuds/coyotl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>Maybe Stiles was planning on just annoying the crap out of the spirit until it just gave up and crawled back into its hole, or key, or box, or whatever the fuck it was it came from. Derek certainly knew Stiles capable of it. He’d clocked enough miles with him to be extremely aware of just how persistent and annoying and persistently annoying Stiles could be when he put his mind to it.</em>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> this takes place at some unspecified point after [Taking Leave](http://archiveofourown.org/works/743668), but you don't necessarily need to read that to enjoy porn, do you? Didn't think so.  
> Dub-con (ish) in that our boys are dealing with a demon. But you know our boys- that demon's never gonna win.  
> 

Derek raised a single eyebrow in amused speculation, looking between the phone Stiles was holding up and Stiles himself.

“A Club? you want to go out to a club? In the middle of a job?”

A job Derek had disapproved of, and therefore Stiles just couldn’t let go of.

The whole thing stank. Maybe not literally (although Derek knew he wasn’t imagining the whiff of _something_ he was catching from time to time), but the job had been iffy to begin with, not cleared through the proper channels, no one quite clear on who had vetted the client, no one willing to be exactly precise on the _nature_ of the delivery, none of their usual chain of command involved. The delivery of a small wooden box that felt by all rights empty, and a key. That Stiles was supposed to wear the entire time.

All of it so fucking wrong that Derek wanted nothing to do with it and of course, _of course_ , Stiles wanted nothing but to climb all over it. The whole job looked like a tailor-made honey-trap. Derek had said as much, and Stiles had answered with his spikiest smile and a gleeful _I know, right?_ (Derek might or might not have given himself a migraine from how hard he rolled his eyes back into his head.)

And Stiles had been acting creepily _off_ , the uncanny of the common acting just a little bit not-right. Couldn’t quite put his finger on it, but the kid was manic. Like his ADD was acting up. And let us not forget the key. It was a creepy fucking key, dangling from the same wrist that was shoving a phone in his face, showing the times and location for what was likely some half-rate local goth scene.

There was a point to this. Stiles never goes out when he’s on a job. It comes of having nearly died from stupid one too many times. Now, he took any job pretty fucking seriously. It was never a safe job. There was no such thing as safe. Hence, Stiles doesn’t go out, get shitfaced and start a fight at some local bar until _after_ the job is done. Ever. Derek let his eyebrow make the point.

There was always the chance that Stiles was just regressing. It happened sometimes, about as often as the nose-bleed tranced-out god-possessed murders of evildoers happened. Not that Derek had any room to judge. After all, Stiles had run by his side on a moonlit night or two. (There may have even been a night where they might have taken a deer down with a single knife, both using nothing but their human skill-set. There may or may not have been potion-laced tequila involved.)

But he let his eyebrow pursue that point as well, because why bother with words when you could just use your face to demand explanations? It was as effective as ever. Stiles was throwing his arms over his head, phone still in one fist, growling out a whine.

“Look, I just have this song stuck in my head. It’s been like this all day, and I can’t make it stop, so I figured maybe...”

Derek let out a small chuckle and Stiles brightened considerably, standing to walk out the door. Truth be told, it was a foregone conclusion that they would be going, because it was a foregone conclusion that Stiles would go with or without Derek, and it was a foregone conclusion that Derek would follow Stiles if he did.

“What song?” He asked as they slipped out of the motel room door.

Stiles rubbed his forehead unconsciously. It was the kind of movement that belonged with the kid he used to be, back before he became a fae-touched lunatic killing-machine _fucking wizard_. It stilled Derek’s blood. Which he was genuinely grateful for, because he knew he would have tripped over his feet if he hadn’t been already on edge before Stiles answered with a wry grin. “BeeGees. Stayin’...”

_“Staying Alive, Stiles? Really?”_

_Stiles’ grin was cheeky as he glanced at Derek and then gestured broadly at the large old graveyard tucked behind a low stone wall next to the sidewalk they were on. “Haven’t you ever heard of whistling past a graveyard, Derek?”_   
_Derek let out another snort. “After all we’ve been through. This is what brings you to contemplate your mortality? Walking next to a graveyard?”_   
_Stiles had stopped singing under his breath as soon as they got past the consecrated ground, flashing Derek another one of his patented half-mad half-cocky grins. “It’s not to keep from dying, Derek.” He leaned in and whispered the rest right up against the shell of Derek’s ear. “It’s so they can’t hear what you’re thinking.”_

Fuck. And okay, maybe Derek thought it was okay to start thinking that it wasn’t his imagination that the stupid fucking key smelled like sulfur.

He’d _told_ Stiles this was a bad job. That he had been right burned almost as much as Stiles bitching about Derek becoming an old man had. That he couldn’t bitch Stiles out about it now that it was becoming abundantly clear that he’d been right – that just had him fuming.

Rage, though?

Derek was feeling the white-hot edge, that thing that made him razor sharp and very very dangerous exclusively towards whatever creature it was that had decided to hitch a ride in Stiles. And everyone who might have thought that stealing the kid’s will was in any way a feasible act. Stiles was as powerful as he was without having gone pants-wetting catatonically insane through the exercise of will exclusively.

So, if it wasn’t Stiles he was dealing with at the moment, which was moving rapidly from the realm of possible to the realm of probable, then at least it was clear that Stiles was still running the show on some level. Enough to keep the intruding presence out of the places that mattered. Enough to keep it from hearing what Stiles was thinking. Enough to bug the fuck out of that thing that thought it might be a good idea to try to possess a god-mad wild-child covered in inked incantations and fae magic.

Maybe Stiles was planning on just annoying the crap out of the spirit until it just gave up and crawled back into its hole, or key, or box, or whatever the fuck it was it came from. Derek certainly knew Stiles capable of it. He’d clocked enough miles with him to be extremely aware of just how persistent and annoying and persistently annoying Stiles could be when he put his mind to it.

Still, it didn’t make him sit easy, and it was hard not to get twitchy. After all, whatever spirit had gotten ahold of him _had_ managed to crawl into Stiles' brain, even if partially, and Derek had no clue whatsoever how powerful a creature had to be in order to climb into a body quite as be-spelled as Stiles’ was. Likely something very powerful, and likely something quite mean was trying to set up residence in there.

Derek was going to track down every single party involved with this job. He was going to string them up by their ankles and bleed them dry very, very slowly. And he was going to make Stiles listen to him rant about how fucking stupid it was not to listen to him when he said something was a bad idea the whole time he did it. He intended on getting some sort of satisfaction out of this clusterfuck.

But first, he had a club to live through.

It didn’t last long. Derek tried to restrain himself, he really did. He hung back, nursed a beer and watched Stiles work his way through the dance floor, nearly impossible to ignore, sinuous and vibrant, lost in the beat and the press of bodies around him. Lost to the want and lust he was inciting.

And inciting was the accurate term. The locals might not have picked up on it, but Derek could see the light touches, feel the charge in the room, fucking _smell_ the lust compulsion drifting off of him, and he had no doubt, not a single one, that whatever had taken residence in Stiles was _feeding_. Which meant, most likely, that if he didn’t step in damn soon, this whole shit-show was going to end in blood and frenzy.

He’d already smelled steel and gunpowder on more than one individual, and there was no way that Derek was going to let things escalate to the point where they were going to have to deal with the local law on any capacity, but especially not one which involved a call of ‘shots fired’ at the local watering hole. The sheriff would have his balls for something like that, pure and simple. He’d made it abundantly clear on more than one occasion.

Derek was dragging Stiles out by his collar less than an hour after they’d arrived, and even though a few patrons complained, the bouncer was more than happy to see them go. It was even odds whether the man had a clue about supernatural matters or just good instincts. At this point, Derek was certain that Stiles stank of trouble to any level-headed being, no matter how mundane they might have been.

He let go of Stiles when they rounded the corner into a nearby alley. Stiles pulled back and flailed, body language every bit the teenager he once was. Every bit the teenager he should, by all rights still _be_ , if it hadn’t all been burnt out of him, flying too close to the sun one too many times.

Derek was, effectively, looking at a facsimile of what Stiles might have been had he not been dragged violently into the world of the fae, had he not been turned into something both more and less than human. Had Stiles not learned how to call upon gods of his own devising.

Stiles was keeping the interloper from his power.

And by the angry glint hiding under the cocky-kid act, Stiles was keeping it from exactly what the spirit wanted most. It brought a snarky feral grin out of Derek, even as Stiles rounded on him.  “Seriously, do you _always_ have to be a fun killer, Mr Bitchy McBitch Pants?”

Right. No access to Stiles’ more current memories, either, then. No clue what he and Derek had evolved into, just running on years of unresolved sexual tension. Much as he preferred what they had now, he didn’t mind the tingle it ran up his spine, acting out that push-and-pull they had perfected. That illicit thrill that came from toeing the line, constantly egging each other on.

He leaned in, arms crossed, making himself at home well inside of Stiles’ personal space. “Find what you needed in there?”

At face value, it was exactly the sort of thing he used to do. On a completely different level, he was speaking straight to the demon. Because there was no need to mince words, the thing was clearly a demon, or demon-related, or demon-adjacent, at any rate. He could smell the sulfur far too clearly that close up, under all the want-musk it was putting out.

Stiles’ eyes narrowed, calculating for a second before lighting up with determination. Derek wasn’t too proud a man to admit that it tripped his heart up, dropping something cold into his belly, his balls tightening into his body as he realized just what a bad idea _baiting a demon_ might have been. But what the hell, in for a penny and all that, and any attention Derek could draw on to himself was attention he was pulling away from Stiles, the _real_ Stiles, the one in there plotting or fighting or doing fuck-knows-what to get himself out of this bind.

It wasn’t as simple at taking that key off. Derek could figure as much. As for the rest, though, he had no clue. He just hoped he hadn’t made things worse.

Because there was the possibility, in all of this, that Derek had just played them both right into the demon’s hands. The look in his eye certainly said he thought so. As did the way he moved into Derek’s space until he’d been backed up against a wall, close and getting closer, leaning in so that Derek could feel his breath.

“You know? I think I just did.” Derek jumped but didn’t break when Stiles reached out and gripped his hair, tugging his head hard against the wall behind him. “Yeah, I think I know _exactly_ what I need, Derek.”

Stiles’ look was clinical but heated all the same, examining Derek up close and in minute detail, _inspecting_ him. Derek tried hard not to squirm, tried hard to ignore both the fear-tremor that ran up his spine and the blood rushing to his dick in equal measure.

Stiles backed up just a little, enough that Derek remembered how to breathe with a quick gasp before Stiles’ hand wrapped itself around his throat. “Think I know what you need, too, Derek. Want me too spell it out for you? You a fan of absolution, Derek? Because I’m guessing you could use a serious _cleansing of your soul_ right about now. We could burn that guilt right out of you, little dog. Could be lots of fun.”

Derek could have broken the grip. He could have stopped it, in a second, brought Stiles down without hurting him a bit. But that was the thing with demons. They always knew just how to play. And yeah, Derek _wanted_.

And the bitch of it was, he knew Stiles didn’t, wouldn’t ever want things to go down this way between them.

It was the line that Stiles would never cross, regardless of how things got between them, regardless of what they brought to the table on any given day, regardless of the threat and shit-talking Stiles did on a daily basis. Stiles would never take Derek down, not to any level, not ever. They played from time to time, sure, with pain and power, switched roles as their hunger called for it, both of them with blood that ran too hot to be satisfied with tenderness on days they felt pulled taut and drained.

But Stiles had a crystal clear understanding of the line between control and debasement, and would never cross it, not even if Derek begged. And he _had_ begged. Stiles would even make something sacred and beautiful out of Derek in those moments, and as painful on some levels as it was, Derek had been grateful for it.

Not that there was even shame in wanting it, Stiles had made that clear, had sent him off to find what he needed with his blessing (although Derek never did, never thought he could ever trust anyone the way he trusted Stiles, wasn’t ever even interested by the time Stiles was done with him anyway.)

But he still wanted.

To be taught a lesson. To be put in his place. To be mired in filth, collared, contained, brought down and _used_. To be given what he deserved. What he had earned, what he was earning with every passing second that he didn’t put a stop to this, that he didn’t make this demon stop _using_ Stiles to do exactly what Stiles never wanted.

Derek didn’t think he had it in him to make it stop. It dragged a quiet gasp up from his lungs, something far too close to a sob to be anything else. His head was spinning, already lost in some place that cried of desperation and broken things when Stiles shook him just a little, enough to make him look back up, lock eyes with Stiles again. Eyes that were shining in a subtly different way that made every difference to him.

That was _Stiles_ looking at him in that moment, and his words were every absolution he could have ever begged for. “How does it feel to be the bunny this time, Derek?”

_The bunny_. Stiles’ own term. What he called it when he’d play right into his opponent’s expectations, let them think him harmless until they practically forgot that he was in the room. And when the moment was perfect, he’d gut them himself. Derek had watched him looking, more than once, straight into the dying creature’s eyes, drinking in the bewildered confusion their deaths would bring.

(It had been just that sort of moment that had shredded the _never_ Derek had hung on any thoughts about the two of them, the sort of thing that got Derek thinking _maybe_. Thinking that, kid though he may have been, he might also be a monster of the sort capable of not getting himself lost in Derek’s nightmare-infested world.)

He’d shut his eyes, not exactly certain when, only noticing them snapping open as Stiles slid two fingers into his mouth. Stiles’ eyes shone with a predatory fascination that wasn’t Stiles at all and it lit a dangerous fire in Derek’s bones.

He was going to play bunny. He was going to play right into the demon’s hands, and to say that he was doing it with implicit faith in Stiles’ ability to keep them from getting hurt would have been a bald-faced lie. Which did nothing to cool the blood running through Derek’s veins, did nothing but make him even harder. There was no other way to put it, he just desperately wanted what he knew he had coming to him.

Stiles rubbed his fingers over Derek’s tongue, then pistoned them in and out steadily, fucking his mouth with his fingers, palm on his chin pushing his head up, making him bare his throat.

His breath was hot against Derek’s ear. “Are you gonna be a good little bitch, Der?”

Derek couldn’t answer past a small sniffle and tight nod, hoped that would be enough because he thought if he had to make words they’d come out sobbing, and he didn’t think either of them could handle quite that much honesty, regardless of the demon in the mix with them.

Whatever he’d given must have been enough, a warm puff of a laugh hitting his ear before Stiles stepped back, pulling Derek with him, pulling him forward until he was on his knees before he slipped his fingers out and painted Derek’s lips with spit.

There was cold fire in Stiles’ eyes and a feral sharp grin on his face when he laughed breathily again. “Oh, yeah. You and I? We are going to have sooo much fun, little dog. So why don’t you get your ass in the fucking car, eh?”

The ride to the motel was a blur. As was the how and wherefore that ended with the stupid wooden box resting on the bedside table. He was pretty sure they hadn’t spoken a word, that Stiles hadn’t touched or hardly even looked at him, but his head was spinning, lost in the potential of things to come and in the sharp note the demon’s lust-smell had turned to, smelling like the promise of blood, feeling like the moments before the moon crested over the horizon.

Everything snapped back into focus with the sharp crack of a slap to Derek’s face. Hard enough that it cut a little on his teeth, filling his mouth with the coolwarm taste of his own blood. Stiles didn’t look angry, though. Just terribly amused.  “I said strip, little dog.”

Derek dropped his head, reddening down to his neck and getting so hard that he ached as he slipped out of his clothes without pretense, feeling Stiles’ gaze like a presence, like a physical weight. It felt nearly impossible to raise his head. He didn’t even bother, watching Stiles’ feet slide around him, nearly in a dance, fingers trailing over all of Derek’s most tender spots as if to remind him of exactly how well Stiles knew him, knew all his weak spots,knew just where to grip and dig his thumb in, just how to twist to drop him back down to his knees.

Stiles gripped his head by the hair, tilted his face up, making Derek look at him. “I think I like you like this most of all.”

Echoes of Kate, that. She’d tried to hide it, most of the time, tried to play herself off as safe while she had been seducing him, but there had been moments. There had been a moment almost exactly like this one. And later, much later, when torture had been the tool she’d used to hide the sex. It had been there, too.

He tried not to dwell too long on the thoughts that reared, the lingering beliefs that this was exactly where he deserved to be, that this and nothing more is all he had a right to. Tried not to think too hard about how right it felt to be trembling on his knees, jaw locked tight to keep himself from begging to be used.

Stiles wrapped his hand around Derek’s throat, pressing hard on the hinge below his ears, forcing his mouth open, feeding himself into Derek’s mouth, shoving in deep without preamble, fucking in with steady and deep thrusts, scraping Derek’s chin with the zipper every time he bottomed out. Even for all that he was unnaturally still, unnaturally quiet, so that the only sounds in the room was Derek’s own labored breath and occasional hacking gag.

The hot weight of Stiles’ dick in his mouth, the way he had to fight for breaths, the shuddering hacks, all of it sent shivers up and down his spine, washes of warm and cool that fed straight into his own dick and had him straining forward, dropping his jaw open for more and tightening his lips to feel the rub and slick of every inch Stiles would give him. Derek’s hands were gripping his own thighs tight, mirroring the grip Stiles had on his skull.  
When he finally broke the silence, Stiles’ voice was tight but not nearly as high and breathless as it would normally be. “That’s right, dog. Get it good and wet. Work it, because there’s no way I’m going to stop for lube when I’m ready for you.”

That made Derek groan and whine, couldn’t even help the way he raised his ass a little higher, shoved it out, begging even while his mouth was still impossibly full. That caught Stiles’ attention, pulled a stuttering groan out of him even as he reached back to run his fingernails up Derek’s back, muttering, “Fuck... that just...” before he pulled out of Derek’s mouth and turned him, pushing his head down and pulling his ass up, hardly dropping to his knees before he was shoving into Derek’s ass, rocking in small shoves, deeper and deeper until Derek’s body just stopped fighting and Stiles could fuck into him like a freight train.

Derek was well and truly sobbing, not from pain, or shock or anything he could name, but he was sobbing with loud gasps as Stiles held his thighs, pushing and pulling him on to his dick as he pistoned in and out, spreading him open with his thumbs, working himself so thoroughly into Derek that there was nothing left of him, nothing but what Stiles wanted and nothing but what Stiles needed, so that when Stiles wrapped a hand around Derek’s dick it didn’t take so much as a tug as it took Stiles whispering in his ear. “ _All mine_ , Derek. All of you. Come for me.”

And when Stiles shoved in even harder, hooking a come covered hand into Derek’s mouth and whispering, “Come on, be a good dog. Show me those teeth.” Derek did exactly as he was told, not even stopping to think about fangs and flesh, the fresh tang of blood blossoming in his mouth just as he felt Stiles hardening just that bit more and pumping deep inside of him.

He was blank. He’d never felt quite as whited out as he did in that moment, when he felt a shaky hand reach forward and draw a cross on his forehead in spit and blood and come. It was Stiles’ voice he heard, shaky and hoarse but Stiles alone, whispering into the very depths of him just a single word. _“Sanctified.”_

And he felt it, not in any way he could ever explain, felt the cool and clear of a glacial stream running through him, felt clean and protected and more clear-headed than he had any right to be. It was almost as an afterthought, but one that was perfectly clear and obvious, that he turn, reach into the mess they’d made on one another and trace a cross on Stile’s forehead as well. The words he had were old, ones he’d heard from time to time when he was a kid. _“Hallowed be.”_

Stiles eyes cleared, sparked wide and happy for a second before they closed and he nodded off. Derek had seen that sort of thing happen before, when Stiles had worked a heavy magic, and knew well enough not to panic. His heartbeat was warm and steady. The key slipped off his wrist like quicksilver when Derek picked Stiles up and laid him in the bed.

Derek thought about it a little as he picked up the key and used it to open the box, which was, after all, completely empty. Thought about the magic Stiles could do without the use of books, the way that Stiles would talk about rituals as ways to get ideas across, that the signs and symbols were like maps or instructions, that they could be written in a hundred different languages. That, in the end, what mattered was intent and clarity of sight.  
As he dropped the key into the box and listened to the lock close in on itself, there was only one word left in his entire being.

Sanctified.


	2. post script

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Stiles’ cocky grin was back and it put the ground right under Derek’s feet again, like the whole world was spinning properly now that Stiles had his smartass back, and Derek would like to know when, exactly, Stiles’ fucking sass became a necessary component in his life._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mentions of somnophilia in the form of fantasy. More plot than porn and more fluffy feels than plot. Self-gratification (for me) in the form of filling in details that had slipped mention in Taking Leave.

There was probably something wrong with how much he liked it when Stiles was recovering from a bout of magic. Not that he needed to be worried about the sleeping.  He’d been assured, more than once, by Stiles and Deaton alike, that the almost-coma was the best kind of healing Stiles could have.

It was just... his heartbeat, his breathing, his face – everything, everything about him was calm in a way that it never was at any other time, even during a normal night’s sleep. Stiles was just never quiet, never entirely unguarded, never unaware, never _still_. He was like water, constant motion with mass enough to keep Derek afloat, inexorable enough to drown him, flowing into his touch but impossible to hold on to, slipping through his grip with the sensation of falling. (With the magic those fae had pumped in him, they couldn’t even tie him up to keep him still, and Stiles would try, god knows he’d _try_ to stay still for Derek, but he just. Couldn’t.)

So Derek was left with moments like these, when Stiles was down for the count and Derek was rested enough not to want to curl up on top of him like a faithful guard dog, where he could just _look_ , just take Stiles in without making him feel like he was crawling out of his own skin.

The predator in his mind also piped up in moments like this with a hundred other things he could be doing besides just _looking_ , but Derek kept those locked inside himself, well versed in the skills required to ignore his beast and its constant gleeful awareness of the opportunities the weakness of others posed for him.

But he could picture it, all the things he could _do_ while Stiles lay stilled and compliant. All the advantages he could take, how he could touch and taste and take without the overwhelming distraction of Stiles’ need, of Stile’s hunger for Derek’s release.

He wanted to know every inch of that lean and hard-toned body, run his fingers over every carefully guarded and delicate spot, down to the fucking skin between his toes. He wanted to lick every inch of the kid’s body, find out if those scars and sacred marks tasted differently, if he could feel them under his tongue. He imagined some of those spots would feel like licking a battery.

He also wanted to bury his face in that gorgeous ass of his, lose track of time with his tongue buried in Stiles, consumed by his smell and his taste the way he imagined only someone with a little bit of something canine in their spirit could, listening to him moan and whine in his sleep. He wanted to lick his cock, lap at his balls, cover him in spit and see if he could make him come just from that, while he was still asleep, make him come in his dreams, see if it would carry through enough to be remembered when he finally did wake up.

“I keep hoping maybe this is the time I get to wake up with you three fingers deep inside me and your cock in my mouth. But here I am. Disappointed once again.”

Derek hadn’t even noticed that Stiles had woken up, he’d been so wrapped up in his own fantasy. But to be fair, Stiles also came out of this sleep easy and slow, his heart still nearly as calm as it had been when he was out cold, his voice sleepy and warm, moving smooth and easy.

Derek ducked his head and hid an embarrassed smile, not quite capable of meeting those warm eyes quite yet. “Yeah, you’d probably end up biting my dick off anyway.”

Stiles huffed out a little laugh, kicking down the sheets as he stretched languidly and Derek could not tear his eyes away from the sight, runes and incantations slipping in his vision, body taut, lean and golden like a mountain lion. Most of the time that would fill him with a mouth watering _want_ that would leave him growling, but lately... lately it filled him with something deeper. A desire more like kneeling and less like stalking. He tried not to think about it too hard, most days.

In that moment, though, something caught his eye and had him staring, reaching out and holding Stiles down to look at his chest more clearly. At the fae amulets grafted into his skin that perched below the outswept wings of his collarbones, flat stained-glass looking disks. He didn’t touch them, or tried not to, knowing Stiles didn’t like that, but couldn’t help running a thumb around the edges of one.

Stiles craned his neck down to see, asking breathlessly, “Wha? Did they change again?”

They had. It wasn’t the first time this had happened. When they’d first been laid into him they had looked like a somewhat random assortment of geometry and color, both alluring and yet ringing with a sort of wrongness that Derek never put words to, never even tried, knowing Stiles didn’t remember or consent to them being put in and didn’t need to hear even more shitty news about them.

After the shit had hit the fan, after Stiles had run and... After Stiles had been mauled and mutilated, after Peter had tried to carve the remnants out, the fae bastards had come back to fix the job. They did it right that time, or what Derek assumed was right, and the finished result had been pictures. Pictures that didn’t feel wrong, that Derek could stare at forever if Stiles wouldn’t cover them up and make some light comment about the way he was staring at his boobs.

Honestly, he loved the little pictures and wished he could talk to Stiles about them, but they were a pretty touchy subject. In that moment, though, Stiles looked sleep-soft and curious, so he thought he’d take the chance.

He cleared his throat as he touched the bottom ridge of the first. “Red dots, here, like flowers, under the coyote’s feet. And here, with the crow. A yellow star or spark or something in the sky behind him.”

Stiles wasn’t looking down anymore. He was looking straight at Derek, like he was pleased and perplexed at the same time. “Coyote. Everyone thinks it’s a wolf.”

Derek nodded, ducking his eyes for a second. “I know. And you never correct them. You’d think Scott should be able to tell the difference.”

That got a little huff out of Stiles. “Yeah, you would. But that’s a raven. That’s got to be a raven.”

He gave himself all the points for not laughing right back in Stiles’ face. “No. It’s not. See the tail? Fan-shaped, even-sized end to end. Ravens are more like diamonds, the middle feathers are longer. Bigger beak, too, although that’s kind of hard to tell in a picture that size.”

Stiles was pushing himself up, straining to look at the talisman, squeezing his skin to see it better. “Seriously? _Seriously?_ A crow? What does that even mean? How could I not know...”

Derek couldn't keep the laugh down any longer, but Stiles’ eyes were shining just as happily when he looked up. “ _See?_ This is the kind of thing I need to keep you around for, like all the time. Even if you won’t molest me in my sleep.”

And everything was so open, so light, that Derek didn’t have a hope in hell of fighting off the massive blush that he could feel up to his hairline. “I just... I never thought... I don’t...”

It was the rarest of moments when Stiles seemed just about as flustered as he did. “I get that, and I know you wouldn’t want to, like, take advantage or anything, but... you know... if you ever _did_ want to...”

Derek’s answering grin was wolfish. “Still not sticking my dick in your mouth.”

Stiles’ cocky grin was back and it put the ground right under Derek’s feet again, like the whole world was spinning properly now that Stiles had his smartass back, and Derek would like to know when, exactly, Stiles’ fucking sass became a necessary component in his life.

But whether he would ever be willing to admit it out loud or not, that tilt of his grin and lift of his eyebrow was something Derek would kill to keep around. “Aww, Derek. Never? I bet I could get you to agree that the world is a cold and cruel place without me being able to get my mouth all over you.”

He couldn’t help but let his own grin widen. “I’d be willing to let you work on convincing me.”

He did concede, in the end. There were even declarations that Stiles managed to pull out of him regarding the relative importance of Stiles’ mouth versus anything Derek had ever held dear, including his leather jacket and his Camaro, but Derek was going to hold fast with the argument that these things were said under duress. Extreme duress. Duress of the sort only Stiles and his goddamned mouth could ever cause.

It put him in an especially good mood when they finally got their shit together enough to finish the fucking job. He was even in a good enough mood not to kill anyone. Okay, maybe not good enough to keep him from killing because vengeance was his friend, but what his mood hadn’t covered, Stiles did, with a long discussion regarding things like keeping their employer happy, serious threats of withholding, and finally, when all else failed, promises of the sort that made it nearly impossible to _think_ , let alone be pissed off when Stiles handed over the box to the half-starved human-alpha blonde bitch at the receiving end of the drop.

And he had to admit, the look of impotent fury and then total panic on her face when Derek told her where the key was and she realized that Stiles would not, after all, be a part of the delivery was pretty satisfying. As was the follow-up conversation Stiles had with headquarters, which involved impressive apologies, talk of massive bonuses and promises made which put even the ones Stiles had recently made to shame.

So, at the end of the day, things had worked out. That didn’t mean, and Derek wanted to be perfectly clear on this, that taking the job had been a good idea. And there were no promises that could ever be made that were going to keep him from making that point absolutely crystal clear for the entire ride home.

Stiles was good about it, though. Had to be. Because apparently, much to Derek’s delight, he’d discovered that a strip of duct tape to the mouth didn’t, in fact, qualify as the sort of bond that Stiles’ magic took offense to.

And the way he’d jacked Stiles, nice and slow, enough to keep him hard but not enough to get him off the whole ride home as well? Let’s just say that he didn’t think Stiles was going to be making any wise cracks about positive reinforcement as an important tool in dog training any time soon.

Yeah, he was going to count this one as a win. Even if he wasn’t going to say it out loud.


End file.
